ABSTRACT

The people of the southern half of Korea, who achieved an economic take-off a generation ago, have very likely reached their point of political take-off. In traditional Korea, the governmental and social structures were strongly hierarchical. The Korean political and social system never fully recovered from the Japanese invasion of 1592-98, however. By the 19th century the impoverished Korean peasants, forced to support a swollen and parasitic aristocracy, had begun to manifest their discontent through popular uprisings. The Japanese, by their seizure or Korea in 1905 and subsequent colonial rule, denied the Koreans any opportunity for political development. With the defeat of Japan in 1945, Korea reemerged. Resentment at the oppression and poverty of the colonial era had sharpened the keen Korean sense of ethnic identity into a fierce nationalism. Korea was rapidly gaining economic ground and the North was falling behind—although the South's gains were accompanied by political retrogression into quasi dictatorship.